


better not to give in

by nicalyse



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Post 3.22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicalyse/pseuds/nicalyse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	better not to give in

**Author's Note:**

> For softly_me.

It is Elena's own death that nearly breaks her.

(That isn't strictly the truth, but it has a nice ring to it.)

 

 

Elena knows that Caroline would want her to complete the transition. 

Bonnie doesn't, though she's sobbing when she admits it. 

Damon is very matter-of-fact about it: If she doesn't complete the transition, she dies, and Elena cannot die. 

Stefan says that it is her decision, and that he will understand no matter what she chooses.

(She wonders, with a clinical detachment that she does not recognize as a part of herself, how many more people will die at their hands if she chooses to let it all go.)

 

 

She decides to stay for Jeremy, for her brother who has lost too much and deserves to have her as more than a ghost and a slow fading memory.

(She once read a book about a girl who had to choose whether she would stay or go, live or die, after being in an accident. That girl chose to live.

There's a sequel, but Elena hasn't had time to read it. She finds herself wondering, when Stefan brings her a mug from the kitchen filled with blood from a bag, whether that girl was happy or not.

She thinks, her throat itching, that surely now she'll find time to read the rest of the story.)

 

 

The moment she swallows the blood, she knows it is too much.

They race through her, moving too quickly to distinguish one from the other, overwhelming her with the sheer volume and stealing the breath from her lungs.

She can't--

 

 

it's all--

 

 

she feels _too much_.

 

 

Turning it off isn't an option.

If it's there, this switch that she's heard so much about, she doesn't know how to find it. But even if she could, even if she _wanted_ to turn off her emotions, her humanity, she couldn't do it. Because Elena has seen what happens when a man denies an important part of himself, and she is terrified of what that might mean for her, of who she might become.

(If she doesn't feel, who _is_ Elena Gilbert?)

 

 

"How are you?" Matt asks when Damon and Stefan leave to check on Tyler and Caroline.

_I want to rip out your throat and drain you dry,_ she doesn't say.

_I think Damon and Stefan might tear me apart,_ she doesn't say.

_I wish I could just die already,_ she doesn't say.

"I'll be fine, Matt."

(Because she has no choice but to be fine. She can't afford to fall to pieces.)


End file.
